Keeping Your Clients Happy

As any other business, to be successful, law firms need to ensure customer satisfaction. Maintaining a healthy and strong relationship with clients is crucial to the success and longevity of any legal practice, and those who fail in doing so, face great difficulties and contribute to the rising resentment among legal services consumers towards the industry.

A BTI Consulting Group study suggests that from a consumer point of view, legal services firms which provide better customer care, including streamlined client experience and reasonable prices for comprehensive services, are seen as superior to competitors. These perceived superior legal practices enjoy 33 per cent higher profits and 36 per cent higher overall growth rates compared to competing firms. They also benefit from 33 per cent higher client retention rates and double the revenue from single clients.

To find out, analyse and understand your customer satisfaction rates, online surveys are usually recommended, as they are convenient to clients who can complete them in their free time, and the anonymity encourages honesty – so you will gather accurate, reliable data.

Face to face interviews might affect accuracy, as people are less likely to say what they really think if they assume the truth is not what the interviewer really wants to hear, however, some complex relationships can benefit greatly from personal interactions. This allows interviewers to obtain deeper qualitative information as clients elaborate their opinions in greater detail than they would in an online survey.

Face-to-face meetings are also beneficial to building trust and strengthening new relationships, as clients will have the chance to link a face to your brand.